I took the bus from Kathmandu to Jiri then walked to Everest Base Camp. Arriving with good acclimatization meant I was able to beat other trekkers on the way up and had Kala Pataar all to myself for a decent amount of time. The weather was great in March: clear skies in the morning and cumulonimbus later on. Not crowded at all outside of the main corridor. I was most often alone on the passes and side trips. Same goes for AC & ABC in April.

Left around 6-7AM, and heard from the early risers that our late start was the better choice. Any earlier and Everest would have been a silhouette, and the air biterly cold. Sun came out 1/3 of the way up, and we were stripping layers quickly. After a faint spell due to climbing too quickly, we slowed down and the rest felt like a breeze. Scrambled to the tip of the summit block, per gimpilator's persistence. Incredible views, specifically of Pumori. A small bird sang to us from the top!

Because of the cold, I didn’t want to get up early and thought that we should wait until later for warmer weather and better lighting conditions for photos.

All went well except for one scary moment when the Sherpa got altitude sickness. When we climbed Kala Pattar, it was -19F/-18C and fairly windy. I wanted to sleep in until it got warmer, but the Sherpa wanted to climb early in the morning. Because it was so cold and the sunlight was beckoning up higher, Kessler and I hurried very quickly 16,995 feet/5180 meters to 18,373 feet/5600 meters making the 1400 feet/420 meter climb in an hour, which is much faster than normal. Since we had no idea that the Sherpa was feeling altitude sick, we climbed both little peaks around Kala Pattar.

The Sherpa got sick trying to keep up, but we didn't know that he was sick until we got down and he couldn't walk well. He wouldn't admit that he was altitude sick, but we and others could tell. It was apparently a matter of pride that he couldn't keep up with Kessler and the Sherpa people have a hard time admitting to altitude sickness, so we had no idea (he was apparently a well known climbing Sherpa whom had been to Everest several times as a porter, which made it harder to admit sickness).

We were supposed to head back to Lobuche and climb the Lobuche Pinnacles today, and cross the Cho La the next day, but since the Sherpa got sick we descended quickly to Periche and divided the load between the other porter and myself.

We got the Sherpa back down to a lower elevation and after taking Diamox, he was OK again and was back to normal and going strong. We were very glad everything worked out well. I would have felt really guilty if anything had went wrong. The altitude sickness never was life threatening, but it was scary since it was very difficult to try and talk the Sherpa into descending.

Other than that scary incident everything ran perfectly. It was cold, but we had clear and cold skies the whole time. It was so spectacular and I took many photos so far. So far, the people in the mountains were really nice and the mountains were great.

Focusing on the good part, Kessler beat his altitude record set on Chhukhung Ri, but only barely. The Sherpa felt bad that we had to change our plans, but we assured him that we were fine with the change of plans and wouldn’t mention him by name. We gave him part of his tip early to show that we weren’t upset at all.

Second time on Kala Pathar and it was cloudy again...next time I must wake up earlier so I can get a view of Everest! This time I struggled to get up, so I was very happy when I finally reached the summit. I even made a phonecall to Sweden from the summit! :)

Part of a long scenic trek up to Everest Base Camp, 34 miles the way the crow flies but it felt more like 100miles! Took us 9 days and acclimating to 18,000'+ was not really a problem. Day of summit we went from Gorak Shep tea house (about 2 hours) and had an awesome view of the sunrise over Mt Everest.